Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

As things are these days and these are bad days but they could be worse, I was sitting on a wooden chair in a small hall where some children were playing on two grand pianos; a pig-tailed little girl and a bespectacled little boy. As they were playing a boa constrictor slithered out of one piano while a tiger rolled off the other. The audience with admirable restraint pretended nothing was happening, while the two animals fought silently until the boa ate the tiger and then proceeded to eat itself beginning with the tail.. Then a young Japanese boy came on and started playing solo Kabalevski’s Conversation.. A naked man and a naked woman started writhing amorously on top of the two pianos distorting the sound of Kabalevski’s masterpiece with their groans and grunts... Then a little girl with blond hair came on and played G. Lake’s Candy Clock... Skeletons began to rattle in the piano cupboards, and a group of Red Indians poured out on the floor galloping around the performing child.. shooting arrows.. By the end of the recital the young girl was entirely pierced like St. Sebastian.. Her parents didn’t seem to mind at all.. They led her away in a deadly reverent hush which is typical of martyrdoms. . Four female players entered next and played with eight hands Ten Little Indians by Kreahenbuehl.. A man sitting near me across the corridor of chairs kept a sort of rigid stereotype grin on his face and when Gillock’s “Journey into the night” brought in a group of Arab terrorists from the bay window, shooting at everybody, while an Israeli tank crashed in from the left wall, in spite of the visible fact that we were all riddled with bullets, he kept on applauding and grinning.. During Cherepins’ Chimes, there was thunder and lightning and a sudden rain pelted the roof like a machine gun.. when the Pesante and Lugubre, of Moszkowski-Gurlitts’ Valzer’ came on performed by six hands, a sudden gust of wind of hurricane force lifted off the roof.. Yet the wind and pouring rain disturbed no one.. The man on my left went on grinning and applauding and the audience wept and smiled as before in beatific admiration of so much talent.. But the rain was soaking the notes from the two pianos and they started to run out on the floor until we were knee deep in them.. No one seemed to be disturbed... The Recital then ended with a grand finale by eight hands playing Bach’s Chorale in C minor “Oh what shall I, a sinner do?” After the last crash of muted strings everything became calm as a cemetary of the great war with rows and rows of dead notes stretching as far as one could see....